Landry Jones is Returning to Oklahoma For His Senior Season

In a mildly surprisingly move, Oklahoma QB Landry Jones decided to pass up the NFL so he could return to the Sooners for his senior season, the school announced today.

Sorry Washington and Seattle, but your No. 1 target for QB next year is going to have to be Baylor’s Robert Griffin III. Good luck trading up to get him. Unless you’d rather gobble up Texas A&M’s Ryan Tannehill in the second round. Who wants to take a flier on old man Brandon Weeden? (Fire up the Roger Staubach story!) Does Kirk Cousins later in the draft interest you?

As we’ve chronicled here throughout the season. Jones had an up-and-down junior year. There were disagreements about him in the preseason. Are his lofty stats just a product of the OU system? Is his arm strong enough? Has Sam Bradford’s unimpressive NFL start hurt Jones at all?

After his best receiver, Ryan Broyles, went down, Jones looked even worse. What’s he going to do without his safety net next season? All legitimate questions. It certainly didn’t help Jones that the preseason No. 1 Sooners (damn those preseason polls!) had a disappointing year, losing to Texas Tech (at home!), Baylor, and then getting throttled by Oklahoma State.

The one big risk here is that if Jones regresses further, he could easily fall down a couple rounds because there are so many potentially good QBs that could enter the 2013 draft. Jones was likely the 3rd QB who would have selected in the 2012 draft. He could fall as far as 5th in 2013, maybe 6th if Virginia Tech’s Logan Thomas improves and comes out. (The opposite is also true – if Murray, Bray and Thomas don’t come out, Jones could end up being the 2nd or 3rd QB taken. I’m not sold on some of the other seniors like Arizona State’s Brock Osweiler, WVU’s Geno Smith, or FSU’s EJ Manuel. Then again, who thought Robert Griffin would have the kind of year he did?)

I guess staying in school is the trend among QBs? Sam Bradford did it (he got hurt), then Andrew Luck did it (he didn’t win the Heisman), Matt Barkley did it (we’ll see what happens), and now Jones has decided to wait for NFL riches.